Nearly everyone who shops for groceries has had one or more grocery bags overturn during the drive home from the store. The bags full of groceries are typically loaded into the trunk of an automobile, or into the open floor space near the back of a station wagon, and the bags receive little or no lateral support in these locations. Even mild cornering or stop-and-go driving can cause a grocery bag to overturn, especially where no canned goods or other relatively heavy articles are packed at the bottom of the bag. An overturned grocery bag is at best an inconvenience for the shopper, requiring him or her to retrieve and rebag the spilled contents which has typically spread itself all over the trunk or other area of the automobile. At worst, an overturned grocery bag will spill fragile or breakable articles, creating a wasteful and unsightly mess which must then be cleaned from the automobile.
Although various kinds of bag supporting structures are shown in the prior art, these structures are generally intended to hold the bag during a filling or loading operation. A support especially intended for stabilizing grocery bags should be relatively inexpensive to purchase, relatively sturdy and easy to use, and should fold or collapse into a relatively compact configuration occupying minimum trunk or other storage space when not actually in use.